Yawning in unison, my friend and I exchanged bored glances as our professor went on about the Copenhagen School of Securitization. 

“I wish I could take a nap,” he said.  “In Taiwan, it’s normal for students to be sleeping all over campus. If I did that here, people would think I was weird.” 

I myself have had my fair share of naps in library corners or on student union couches, but the life of a German student isn’t quite the same as my own. Perhaps it’s that they have less of a focus on being busy nonstop, running from class to work to clubs and fitting in a nap anywhere that they can, or maybe it’s simply a difference in social standards. 

While the differences in culture are evident enough, the other international students and I often find ourselves in the midst of differences in the one thing that we thought could unite us all: student life. 

From homework expectations to class size and difficulty, adjusting to a new university was perhaps the most difficult change for me to make in moving to another country.

Students from countries known to be loud often find themselves being shushed in lecture halls while those from cultures with little focus on start times get scolded for walking in halfway through class. For me, the biggest problems aren’t getting to class on time and certainly not being too loud, but rather staying away from wearing sweatpants to class and getting used to using different pronouns with my professors than with my classmates. 

A few times this semester, I have found myself standing angrily at the printers, confused and wondering why they couldn’t just make it work like the ones I’m used to at home.

Throughout all of the differences that have taken getting used to, the basic structure of German university life remains the one that I have yet to get used to, and many other international students seem to agree. 

While getting used to walking everywhere, figuring out basic chores like laundry and grocery shopping and even speaking an entirely different language all took some time to get used to, having school, something that had always been such a constant in my life, suddenly be completely different sometimes makes it feel like my whole world is upside down. 

— Shannon Rabotski is a 2016 graduate of Monroe High School and is a junior at Drake University. She is spending the year studying abroad in Tubingen, Germany. She can be reached at shannon.rabotski@drake.edu.